UltimateFavesPRO 2.6 introduces a special new MultiTasking feature: It integrates seamlessly with your favorite home app, and allows you to launch any carousel anytime, anywhere, simply by double tapping the Home button on your phone!

After installing the update, when you first press Home, the following dialog will be displayed:

Since this is the first time, a configuration wizard will be displayed: In the first step, select your favorite home app from the list.

Step 1: Select your favorite Home app

If this is the first time you installed the application and you don’t have any carousels defined, the following screen will be displayed:

You can always start the wizard again by pressing menu -> Settings -> Home screen settings after you have created a few carousels, and then the screen would look like this:

Step 2: Select the carousel you want to pop when double-tapping the Home button

This is where you select the carousel you want to launch when you double-tap the Home button.

The final step is only relevant if you reached the wizard from the settings screen, and you currently have another default home app set as default:

Step 3: Only relevant if you started the procedure from the settings menu, and not by pressing home)

After pressing done, follow the on screen instructions if needed, and you’re all set: Double-tap the Home button and you can access your carousels from anywhere!

Reading an article on the web? Doing something important, but need to quickly send an e-mail? SMS? Make a call? Launch your predefined carousel with your frequent contacts, numbers, etc. After that you can return to what you were doing.

Launch the running-tasks/processes carousel to quickly kill an application and free up memory on your phone, you can display up to 16 apps at once instead of the standard 6 (or 8 on Froyo)

UltimateFavesPRO v2.5 is now available on the market with the following changes and updates:

This is the first time the PRO version is available on the market. Thanks to the new PayPal API that allows in-app purchase, UltimateFavesPRO can be enjoyed world wide, and is not limited to countries that have Google Checkout access. This will also allow me to release more frequent updates and for you to get them.

New plugins infrastructure. Currently, all the familiar plugins are included in the app, but I might make them available as separate downloads in the future for a much smaller .apk. This will happen only once the new plugin design will be tested with new and more complex plugins. (I have some really cool things planned!). I might even open up this infrastructure for 3rd party developers.

Android 2.0+ contacts and accounts support. Put any number/e-mail of any of your contacts from any of your accounts in the carousels. Fully integrates with HTC’s SenseUI (Facebook images, etc)

Improved OpenGL rendering using VBO’s.

Main menu now appears as a dialog menu.

Tons of small other things, many of them are behind the scenes, and I’ll share them with you when I release the new upcoming features.

I’ve listened to all of your complaints and requests. Many bugs have been fixed, and many new features are on the way.

I want to thank all the people who supported the app while it was not available on the market and purchased it directly via the blog.

Existing customers, please follow these steps to enjoy the new version, and all following updates:

Uninstall your current copy.

Download the update from the Android market.

Send me an e-mail with the following details: Your phone’s IMEI
(From you home screen: Menu -> Settings -> About phone -> Phone Identity -> IMEI
– OR –
Menu -> Settings -> About phone -> Status -> IMEI) and the e-mail used in your PayPal purchase, and I will send you an activation code. (Verizon / CDMA phone users: That would me your MEID)

Launch the new version, go to Menu -> Settings -> Enter license key, and put the new activation key to enjoy unlimited carousels!

UltimateFavesPRO v1.2 is ready for download with new features and bug fixes!

Ok, so let’s go over everything:

Until now, there was actually only one carousel type: “user-defined”. I’ve added 4 more carousel types!

5 different carousel types

Running Tasks

Create a carousel of your current running tasks, create a shortcut to it on your home screen, and voila! you got yourself a great task switcher!

Too many open tasks? Want to kill some of them? Just tried a new Android market app that you prefer to quickly uninstall? not a problem, long-press any of the items in the the running tasks carousel and you’ll get the following menu:

Kill and uninstall tasks faster than ever!

Recent Tasks

When long-pressing the home button, Android will show you the last 6 recent tasks you’ve used. Now you can have more! Create the recent tasks carousel, create a shortcut to it on your home screen, and you’ve got 16 recent tasks. That’s 266% more ;-)

Running Processes

Android is doing a lot of stuff in the background, and many applications use background-services. If you want to know what’s going on behind the scenes, and free up some memory, create the running-processes carousel and do it!

View and kill running processes on your phone

System Settings

Note: This feature is only compatible with Android 1.6 and above.

Ok, this part is really great. One thing I was missing in Android “out-of-the-box”, is the ability to quickly and easily manipulate some common system settings. Android 1.6 introduced the Power-Control widget, which is a little better. Android 2.0 introduced the lock-screen that allows you to mute the phone with a single swipe which is also great. But how about things like muting the phone but turn on vibration? What about enabling / Disabling 3G data to save some bytes on you data plan?

Here it is:

Change ringer and vibrate settings swiftly

More ways to create shortcuts

Until now, if you wanted to create a home-screen shortcut, there was just one way to do it, and some people were not aware of it: From your home screen, you had to press Menu -> Add -> Shortcut -> UltimateFavesPRO.

I’ve added two more ways for your convenience:

When clicking on Menu -> Edit carousels, there’s a new option at the bottom of the menu: “Create Shortcut”. It will create shortcut to the currently active carousel.

Create a shortcut to a carousel easily from within the application

And another way:

A new option added to the 'Settings' menu: "Create home-screen shortcuts"

Bug fixes

I’ve fixed some bugs. Here are the important ones:

1. Background Transparency: Some of the Droid users complained about complete transparency and opaque backgrounds. Everything should work correctly now, not only that, I’ve also speed-optimized these two settings. (To change the background transparency, go to Menu -> Settings -> Background transparency, also make sure that background type is set to solid-color).

2. On some specific modded Android versions (Like ManUp456’s Eclair 2.0.1 v1.4), and some devices (like Samsung Galaxy), there was an OpenGL problem that made the icons look hollow, almost invisible. If you encounter this problem, you need to open Menu -> Settings -> Advanced Settings and check-mark Enable alpha-test.

A new option to work around OpenGL problem on some devices and Android versions

3. A bug that caused the wrong carousel to open in some cases. The scenario to reproduce the problem was to create shortcuts to two carousels, click on one shortcut, then click Home instead of Back, and open the other shortcut. This little embarrassing bug has been fixed as well.

New Look

Well, last but not least, I’ve changed the menu icons. I think these are nicer. Don’t like them? Don’t worry about it, you’ll be able to change them soom once I add the icon packs :-)